The new downtown bus station in Bangor’s Pickering Square is almost finished. I’ll be writing more on this soon, but to celebrate, I’m revisiting a post from January 2020, just before the city council vote that set this all in motion, interspersed with photos from the construction process. This is proof positive that positive things can happen when a determined group of citizens makes a concerted effort to improve their community.

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It’s coming down to crunch time for those of us who ride the bus. The Bangor City Council will vote on Monday, January 27 whether or not to build a central depot for the Community Connector bus system in Pickering Square.

I’m in favor of it, and so were three-quarters of the attendees at a council workshop on January 13. The importance of the issue was underscored by the overflow crowd, which could not fit into the room.

Those in opposition tended not to be bus riders, and I will repeat the invitation I offered at that meeting: take a day, or a week, or whatever time you have, and use the system before trying to redesign it.

Opponents of the Pickering Square hub have put forth a series of shifting positions. There was the so-called “Joni Mitchell option” proposed a couple of years ago to pave the square and put up a parking lot. Some of the same people are now advocating for a green space and pedestrian mall. Others want to wait years and possibly decades to build a multi-modal transportation “hub” far from the center of Bangor’s radiating street design.

And despite two commissioned studies that affirmed Pickering Square as the optimal spot for a bus hub, a minority of those in attendance, and a minority on the council, continue to call for more information before moving forward.

This should be recognized for what it is: a delaying tactic, until some hypothetical future study, at further cost, yields the recommendations they want.

The idea that the city should gather more detailed information on current ridership, for example, seems reasonable on the surface. But it is somewhat beside the point. Any plan will need to include not only the people who ride the bus now, but also those who can be convinced to ride an improved bus system in the future. Later hours – the next big hurdle – will help with this. But so will a central, comfortable, and above all, visible downtown bus hub. It’s time to get it done.

Cities all over the world have found that reducing the number of cars in their downtown areas improves the business climate as well as the physical climate. Bangor needs to join this growing movement.

I was glad to see at the recent meeting that many business owners in downtown Bangor get this. The bus is a built-in delivery system for customers and employees. One bus can obviate the need for as many as 30 parking spaces. A bus makes less noise, takes up less space, and creates less pollution than the number of cars required to transport an equal number of passengers.

I’m not against cars. A certain number of people need to have them, for various reasons. What I am against is the unchecked proliferation of cars, the official encouragement of driving at the expense of other forms of transportation, and the tendency of municipalities to design and implement infrastructure for the near-exclusive benefit of drivers and car owners.

We are living in the Late Automobile Age. Many Americans, especially the young, are beginning to realize that individual car ownership is not the necessity we have been told that it is. But the drumbeat from the automobile and advertising industries has been so relentless over the past several decades that it is difficult for some people to imagine a different future.

It will take time to loosen the grip of the car culture on the American way of life. But lasting, fundamental change happens in increments. It happens in small steps, like electing representatives to city councils who understand the liberating potential of public transportation. Building a bus hub in Pickering Square is but one small step in an ongoing process. But it is a step in the right direction.